For over 400 years, Old Point Comfort at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, now including Fort Monroe, has been a strategic site that influenced many aspects of United States history, from its use by Virginia Indians before Jamestown to its service as a U.S. Army post. In August 1619, the first documented Africans in Virginia arrived here aboard the White Lion, and colonial officials traded food for these “20 and odd” Africans after they had been captured from a Portuguese slave ship, marking the first recorded trade of Africans in English North America. No permanent fortifications stood here until Fort Monroe, designed by French engineer Simon Bernard and named for President James Monroe, began construction in 1819 as the largest masonry fort in the U.S. During the American Civil War, it remained a Union stronghold, and after Frank Baker, James Townsend, and Shepard Mallory escaped from the Confederate Army in Norfolk to the fort, Major General Benjamin Butler refused to return them and declared them “contraband of war,” helping give the fort the nickname “Freedom’s Fortress” as thousands of enslaved people sought freedom there. Fort Monroe later protected Hampton Roads harbor during both World Wars and served as a training ground and home for organizations including the Coast Artillery School, Army Ground Forces, Army Field Forces, United States Continental Army Command, and United States Army Training and Doctrine Command before being deactivated in 2011.